Cornell and Ithaca were quiet, white, Republican
places until the
Sixties. Ithaca was the birthplace of the ice cream sundae. The Klan
had an office on State Street. And Nixon clobbered Kennedy here in 1960.

Campus activism during the 1950s had seen little more than rotten eggs
thrown at President Morrill's home, to demand an end to the female
student curfew and to allow co-eds to visit men's dorms. Otherwise,
students and townies went dutifully to war everywhere the flag was
aimed.

Then during the early Sixties many white Americans realized, after the
Montgomery Bus Boycott, that this nation was a brutal racist mockery of
its own creeds: "Of, by and for the People..." and "All men are created
equal..." As a local response, the Ithaca Council for Equality
challenged racial discrimination among banks, landlords, employers and
even barbers.

By 1962 Cornell students had agreed, after hard debate, to spend
Student Activities funds to send twenty to Arkansas, to help register
black voters. In 1963, four busloads of Cornellians rode to North
Carolina to help integrate public facilities, while others attended the
great Civil Rights March on Washington. Cornell acknowledged in 1965
that its own campus needed to open to ebony brainpower, by hosting
orienta-tions for inner city students, and providing them financial aid.

Small protests against the Vietnam War began at this time with
occasional leafletting and faculty teach-ins. As Cornell students began
being drafted by lottery to kill Vietnamese (and to be killed), they
began to understand that they'd be fighting there not for freedom, but
for U.S. corporate domination of Southeast Asia's tungsten, tin,
nickel, rubber plantations, cheap labor and strategic Cold War military
bases (even Eisenhower was explicit about this). The study "Manchild in
the Corporate State" revealed links between Cornell trustees and
investments which profited by war.

Outrage spread across campus and throughout town, with continual
protests, vigils, marches, building takeovers, draft counseling and
draft card burning. The Glad Day Press (located where ABC Cafe is
today) printed antiwar literature for the campus and nation.

Combined anti-war and anti-racist pressures exploded on campus in 1969,
as the Willard Straight takeover by Black students became a symbol of
the fury of the times. Cornell closed down for a week while students
and faculty discussed democratizing and diversifying the university.

Women said "yes to boys who say no" to the draft, then stepped from the
shadow of male anti-war leadership to create their own critique of
patriarchal culture and economics. Six women and their children shut
down Ithaca's draft board for a day, and were acquitted by a local
jury. The Employee Anti-war Committee, started by a female student
worker, educated staff about their rights to protest war and to
unionize. The Women's Center was later established on State Street.

At the same time, Cornell grads and dropouts were
creating new civic
networks in Ithaca, for food supply, fuel supply, housing and
information. Control of these basic needs had been yielded to big
government and big corporations, and was being retaken. There was then
an exciting sense that everything was possible-- that everything could
be done better. Many continue in this spirit, knowing that social
change is lifelong enjoyable hard work.

Cornell and Ithaca College professors taught free classes to townies
and prisoners during the early 70's. The Human Affairs Program,
Cornell's radical town/gown project, started Markles Flats Junior High,
which evolved into today's democratically-managed Alternative Community
(High) School. Other independent schools were formed to promote
independent thinking.

Several publications served the need for new kinds of news, including
Dateline Ithaca,
New Patriot, Tiohero, Guava Jelly, Treetop, Black
View, Lavender Opinion, and Tompkins County Bulletin. "The Rest of the
News" was a nationally-distributed radio program that
deflated
government and corporate propaganda.

Local activist history was explored in such titles as the Amazing
Ithaca History Calendar, Ithaca 100 Years Ago, and Woman's Roots: the
History of Women in Tompkins County.

By this time there were some fifty communes in the
Ithaca area (Great
Leap Forward, Fool on the Hill, The Pond, etc.) developing organic
agriculture, alternative technologies, neofamily lifestyles. The
Community of Communes organized them to facilitate urban/rural
rotations so that everyone could enjoy both city and country living, as
they preferred. Probably half of Ithaca smoked marijuana then. All
inhaled, all exhaled, most have quit, and none died of it.

The Ithaca Real Food Co-op began in 1971 as a buying club to take
control of food quality and prices. It has become GreenStar Co-op. The
Ithaca Farmer's Market reappeared in 1973, started by a Cornell
anti-war Aggie. Both of these have become major stimulants to small
business and regional food security. They're enjoyable social places as
well.

The Ithaca Project (1972-1976) sponsored several
"zero-profit"
businesses which were "competing with capitalism." The People's Yellow
Pages of Ithaca (1974) spotlighted progressive organizations and
businesses. Today, hundreds of local business owners from that era have
tried to retain concerns for ecology, social justice and nonviolence in
their livelihoods.

Realizing that
control of money is even more important to democracy
than voting, locals opened the Alternatives Federal Credit Union in
1979. Since money decides what businesses are started, where jobs are
available, who owns land, and who can get good health care, residents
decided to make sure that their money was working to hire, house and
heal them. Based on such varied grassroots networks, the community
adopted its own paper money, the Ithaca HOUR, in 1991, and started an
independent health security system in 1997, the Ithaca Health Fund.

Even while new
local institutions were creating genuine democracy,

citizens
successfully stopped construction of a nuclear power plant on
Cayuga Lake (1968), stopped construction of four-lane highways through
the city and up West Hill (1976-89), and more recently have stopped
construction of Wal-Mart within the city next to a state park (1992-95).

Students waged
a five-year campaign during the Eighties to force
Cornell to stop supporting South Africa's apartheid with its
investments in racist corporations. Not only were these stocks
profitable, but several Cornell trustees and prominent alumni donors
had South Africa links, so student demands were resisted. Shantytown on
campus dramatized the living conditions of black South Africans.

Cornell-U.S Latin American Relations (CUSLAR) has led many powerful
campaigns to stop abuses of U.S. and Cornell influence in that region.

Labor
union rank and file (led by an ILR grad) twisted Cornell's arm to
get a decent contract for staff, many of whom earn so little doing
full-time work that they've been eligible for Food Stamps. The UAW's
movie "In the Shadow of the Tower" (1994) visited modest homes of
Cornell maintenance workers to show students those who cleaned their
classrooms.

Gay and Lesbian students and townies pushed enaction of
City anti-discrimination law in 1985, then besieged the County Board to
gain similar protection by 1991.

Just three years ago, town and gown
united to stop Cornell's construction of a 177-foot tall incinerator
which would have burned plastic medical wastes, which generates dioxin
which causes cancer and birth defects. They warned: "You'll Get More
Than a Diploma at Cornell."

By the late 80's, activists began to
seek local elective office, to bring better ideas to City Hall and
protect Ithaca from greed. In 1989 a coalition of African-Americans,
environ-mentalists, labor unionists, gay/lesbian and women's groups
elected a social democratic mayor and several leftist council members,
despite warnings and ridicule by all local media.

Then having
declared victory, many activists relaxed, leaving City Hall vulnerable
to conservative business pressures. Although these new officials
advanced renter's rights, stood up for unions, and pressured Cornell to
pay more for public services, subsequent City Hall support for Wal-Mart
caused many activists to spurn the next election. As a result, the
latest city council is the most conservative in thirty years--
rubberstamping the City's dull planning department. But new political
parties in New York State-- the Green Party and Working Families Party,
have the capacity to restore grassroots control of City Hall beginning
this year.

Cornell Today & Tomorrow

These decades of grassroots
creativity are a strong base for the next stages of renewal. Students,
faculty and staff can take control of Cornell to make this great campus
work principally to advance environmental technologies and racial and
social justice. Why else study? Without vast and systematic global
change, today's graduates and their children will grow old in a World
Calcutta, where huge numbers of heavily armed humans will fight
constantly over contaminated food and water, depleted cropland, over
racial privilege, over oil and metal ores-- having extinguished the
last tiger, elephant, gorilla and whale, where none are rich and all
are poor.

Today's business students, for example, are trained to
stride abroad the wreckage of this planet, armed with Cornell
connections, fast cars and power suits. Will this be enough? While it
is considered successful to get rich without caring about the damage
consumerism causes, it is not practical. Ask yourself, 'will this
curriculum teach me how to repair rather than damage soil, water,
animals and air? Will it benefit average people? Will it expand genuine
democracy, or technocratic management?' Domination of a despoiled world
is not success.

Currently, Cornell's priorities tend often toward
making global problems worse, by accepting corporate and military
sponsorship of scientific research (nuclear fission, Star Wars, Bovine
Growth Hormone, Terminator seeds, etc); feeding corporate domination of
markets, winner-take-all global-ization, union-busting, downsizing; and
by its investments in cigarettes and other lethal products. The
security, health, creativity and dynamic stability of human and natural
communities are not Cornell's prime concern. The university has
preferred to export experts who will operate corporate machineries
(factories, military, research, media) that extract labor and resources
to make profits, regardless of damage to humans and nature.

We
have the knowledge and authority to do this. Where does authority come
from? Authority comes either directly from brute force and persistent
assertion, or indirectly from moral force and official-looking pieces
of paper. Consider that Aristotle had no formal accreditation, nor
certainly any diploma, for starting the first university. Ezra Cornell
himself had little schooling. They took authority by assertion.
Likewise, Cornell's non-student and non-faculty trustees were never
elected, except by one another. They have no more legitimacy to rule
than you. And if you care about people and the planet, then you have
more authority to sit in those chairs.

Hundreds of years ago,
students at the Sorbonne hired and fired their professors. Cornell
students need to do likewise with trustees, since you pay the rent and
must prepare futures you prefer for yourselves and your children. To
gather the kinds of knowledge you'll need, the university must be
changed faster than current standards permit.

How would such a
Cornell function? Curricula would always connect study to action. We'd
analyze situations, then take the risk to speak out. Current trustees
and their corporate agendas would be researched, for example. We'd
write crisply to stimulate action, rather than stack dry paragraphs
that echo through hallways unread. We'd challenge pedantry-- demanding
fresh teachers, classes and courses. None would be intimidated by
narrow expertise which seeks to disparage the conviction that people
and planet are more important than profit. Students would respect what
they know, while learning more. We'd require of Cornell the tools with
which to make communities while making a living.

The first lesson from an invigorated Cornell is that everything is
possible: prepare for the best.

Paul
Glover is founder of Citizen Planners of Los Angeles (1983). He is
author of "Where Does Ithaca's Food Come From" (1987) and "Ithaca
Power" (Ithaca's fuel supply, 1988), and holds a degree in City
Management.